This year’s theme for Earth Day is ‘Invest in Our Planet’ and focuses on engaging governments, institutions, businesses, and citizens to do their part. With this in mind, sustainability in 2023 has become as much the responsibility of each employee as it is the wider organisation’s.   

But how do you make sustainability everyone’s job?

Sustainability might not be the core focus of every role but there is an activist in us all. At Microsoft we believe there are ways to unlock this in employees and empower them to engage with sustainability in a way that is authentic and relevant to their role.

For the past 20 years, I have spent a lot of time in the ‘S’ of ESG. Alongside communications and storytelling, I now have the privilege of focusing on the ‘E’ of ESG. I’d like to share four ways we at Microsoft have found effective in helping make sustainability everyone’s job.

#1 Vision and mission

Does your vision and mission clearly align with sustainability? If employees know that their work ties in with the mission of the company, they can feel empowered in making sustainability their business too. Businesses have an opportunity and a responsibility in sustainability so look at your company’s mission and if you need to influence work with the CEO to weave in sustainability goals.

“At Microsoft, we have a strong purpose-led mission: ‘Empower every person on the planet to achieve more.”

Victoria Oakes, Chief of Staff for Sustainability, Microsoft

#2 Collaboration is Queen

To make sustainability everyone’s role, break down silos to make it easier for everyone to work together and foster a community that will collaborate for the greater good. At Microsoft, three things helped us to tackle this.

First, we created a sustainability board where we picked people in each area of the business to represent their teams in sustainability. This forum created a safe space to collaborate, share blockers, challenges, ideas and innovation, and disseminate information. Scaling the work and sharing knowledge is also critical, so having a board has really helped us to develop ‘champs’ in the business who share their insights via their board team lead.

Secondly, we created a dedicated channel on Teams that connects the wider business and gives us a place to share opportunities, wins, training and ideas. We often do social events centred around volunteering, which is not only a good way to give back but also a way to form closer connections with the extended team.

Lastly, having an approachable and credible Chief Sustainability Officer is critical to help galvanise people who want to become part of something that isn’t always their core remit

#3 Demystify sustainability

At Microsoft we have a Sustainability In Action badge that helps us to train the company in all things sustainability, from our own goals and pledges to our narrative, tools and products. We also have regular training and learning sessions with our core team present, so people know who to approach for different kinds of help, support and insight.

Another way to help educate and train people on sustainability is by leveraging world events to tell your story. Earth Day and COP, for example, are great opportunities to educate people when they’re most engaged. We also recently published the Microsoft report on Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap, to help businesses grasp the importance of sustainable transformation. It’s also imperative to remember the importance of social impact. Creating social value and purpose whilst doing business gives companies the opportunity to give back authentically. Companies that can do more should do more, and those that invest will go further. Here at Microsoft, we’re proud of our social impact programs both locally and globally.

#4 Reward and recognise

When people feel valued and recognised their wellbeing is improved as well as their company engagement, it’s also a great way to build community and drive momentum. We always use our dedicated Teams channel to recognise those who complete training, make progress or sign deals. In fact, we’ve recently launched our Sustainability Star of the Quarter Award, which recognises those who make an impact in this space across the business.

Stay committed to your sustainability goals

To wrap up, I want to stress the importance of bringing energy, experience and passion when galvanising cross-discipline teams throughout the business. Walk the walk, stay driven, and commit to building a programme that breaks down silos and promotes collaboration. Invest in sustainable strategies to help you achieve net zero. Look for ways to recognise and reward sustainability efforts, and ultimately try to tie in sustainability and ESG with your company’s core mission and vision.

Not only will it help you make progress towards your sustainability goals, but it’ll inspire a lot of people along the way.

About the author

For the past 20 years Victoria has spent much of her time in communications and the purpose world. Currently holding the position as the Chief of Staff for Sustainability at Microsoft, Victoria leads program management, employee engagement, strategy and thought leadership for the sustainability business. Victoria cares deeply about ESG and how companies can balance business and purpose. She believes companies that can do more should do more and that these purpose levers can drive positive growth and innovation. Victoria also holds a trustee position with African Development Choices, is a judge for the Purpose Awards and won a National Social Impact Award and Platinum Club Award for the innovation she drove in raising awareness of inclusivity.

Find out more

Microsoft Sustainability – products for a Sustainable Future

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

The post Putting sustainability into the heart of everyone’s job: 4 ways to take action appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Welcome to our new MVP Spotlight series! We’ll be talking with some of the wonderful people in our MVP program about their areas of expertise, so that we can learn more about how they got started and their recommendations for others doing the same. We’ll also point you towards the resources they’ve worked on, whether it be articles, videos or podcasts, to help you level-up your own skills.

Meet Marcel, DevOps MVP

This time I caught up with Marcel Lupo, where I asked him about his personal DevOps journey, and how others can get started on their own.

Chris: Introduce yourself!

Marcel: I’m a Microsoft DevOps MVP, Cloud Solutions & DevOps Architect and technical speaker focused on Microsoft technologies in the Azure cloud platform. I specialise particularly in Automation, DevOps and Developer Technologies, with a strong focus on Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Azure DevOps and GitHub. I am passionate about technology and how it can be used in automation to bring true value and solve complex business problems.

I’m a regular speaker at conferences and meetups, and enjoy sharing knowledge and technical content with the wider tech community. I currently work at Avanade UK&I as a Group Manager in DevOps Engineering. As a global DevOps lead for infrastructure and operations professionals, I help build next-generation operating models for digital organisations and help them adopt DevOps culture and innovate on cloud platform services such as Azure.

C: How did you get into DevOps?

M: Coming mainly from the OPS end of the spectrum, I started out as a very seasoned sysadmin with over 18 years’ experience across large and small companies where I had always taken the “Automate everything” approach. I saw the role of systems administration as a role that shouldn’t exist if a system was configured and maintained right.

So wherever I worked I wanted to make things easier not only for myself but for others around me, empowering myself and others to accelerate and succeed in tasks taken on the day to day. I looked at every process and improved on it, taking any repetitive tasks and automating them. I wanted to make things simpler, such as changing 10-step manual processes to a “zero-touch” fully automated solution. Spotting and improving inefficiencies with companies I worked with was also high on my list of objectives.

I transitioned into what is known today as DevOps naturally due to my past working experience with automation. The exposure working alongside developers and embracing the “DEV” culture and the way we worked together meant we ultimately adapted the same practises and disciplines into Operational teams, Security teams and IT teams, where we shared a lot of amazing success stories. We worked with large companies using the Microsoft Cloud to continuously innovate and do incredible things, but most of all to increase efficiencies through the automation of build and deployment, through scalable workloads and much more.

C: Why should other people adopt DevOps?

M: There are so many benefits to adopting DevOps and it’s by no means limited to the following, but DevOps has been proven to increase the speed, efficiency and quality of software delivery as well as improving staff morale and motivation. It removes the communication barriers between teams, therefore removing the reliance on the availability of an individual person or team for software delivery to progress. Efficiency is increased as decisions are made collectively by all involved, and feedback to those decisions is rapid.

Work quality is also improved by the introduction of automation which removes repetitive tasks. DevOps delivers applications, infrastructure and even security in a consistent fashion, removing the mistakes that humans typically make. As the burden of manual work is removed from staff members, they can then focus on more creative work that increases their job satisfaction and adds real value to the organisation.

By establishing automated services, the ongoing operational costs are lower than the human equivalent. There is also a significant speed advantage as automated processes are much faster. The quality of the entire release process improves because steps in the pipeline become standardised, thus creating predictable outcomes.

The DevOps approach results in ease, reliability and confidence to release frequently. This allows for continuous feedback to be rapidly incorporated into future releases, whether that be for software delivery, infrastructure builds or even operational and security automation to be truly Agile.

C: Do you have any tips for people starting their DevOps journey?

M: DevOps is without a doubt the future. It can be applied everywhere – it’s not just for developers developing applications or a product. DevOps can be applied to Infrastructure, Operational tasks, and even Security. When it comes to identifying skillsets and the need for the understanding of how to work in a DevOps environment, there is no doubting that it is becoming more and more important.

DevOps is certainly a culture, and not a role, so my advice is to begin learning as much as possible about DevOps and the culture behind it. It can be applied to almost any environment, as it’s not limited to software delivery. Having prior development or developer experience can also be particularly helpful, but it’s not essential, coming from a non-developer background myself.

I would say that I never saw myself as a developer, but in reality, if you write any sort of automation scripts whether that be PowerShell, Python, Bash… you are essentially a developer.

For anyone starting out, I would recommend learning at least one scripting language and try to automate tasks. Start with the foundations first and also learn about cloud and what cloud platforms are and when to use them. Look at how you can adopt cloud technology and automation together. Microsoft has some amazing foundational courses and certifications in their cloud platform, Azure. But most of all, have fun!

Marcel’s DevOps content

Fortunately for us, Marcel has written a wealth of content both on DevOps and on topics related to it, so it’s a great way to get stuck in. Check out our curated selection of articles below, but be sure to check Dev.to for a more comprehensive list of everything that is available.

Articles

• GitHub Codespaces Pro Tips
  • Introduction to GitHub Codespaces – Building your first Dev Container
  • Integrating Azure DevOps with GitHub – Hybrid Model
  • Hosting your self hosted runners on GitHub Codespaces
  • Hosting Azure DevOps Pipelines agents on GitHub Codespaces
• Terraform Pro Tips
  • Connect Terraform to Azure DevOps Git Repos over SSH
  • Terraform – Complex Variable Types
  • Terraform – Sensitive Output
  • Terraform – Creating dynamic variables using locals
  • Terraform – Filter results using ‘for’ loops
  • Terraform – Selective configuration with ‘lookup()’
• Self Hosted GitHub Runner containers on Azure
  • Create a Docker based Self Hosted GitHub runner Windows container
  • Create a Docker based Self Hosted GitHub runner Linux container
  • Build Docker based GitHub runner containers on Azure Container Registry (ACR)
  • Run Docker based GitHub runner containers on Azure Container Instances (ACI)
  • Autoscaling self hosted GitHub runner containers with Azure Container Apps (ACA)
  • Run Docker based GitHub runner containers on GitHub Codespaces

Videos and Podcasts

• Automate Azure Role Based Access Control using Azure DevOps
• Automate password rotation with Github and Azure
• Automate Azure Resource Decommissions (with tracking)

You can find Marcel on Dev.to and Twitter. He’s also organising and speaking at the London Microsoft DevOps Meetup on November 2nd.

Learn more

• Improve your DevOps practices with these ebooks
• How you can improve your DevOps practices
• The five most common mistakes approaching DevOps
• An introduction to DevSecOps

The post MVP Spotlight: Learning DevOps with Marcel Lupo appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

What does levelling up actually mean? In the health and care context, the term means better services and better care for all. It ensures all communities can access the very best services. Also, it makes sure no individuals, or individual segments of the population are left behind.

The challenges

The last couple of years has not made levelling up easy. Health and care providers have performed against the odds during a time of unprecedented demand. However, there is now an extra burden to an overstretched and under resourced workforce. With over 6 million people waiting for treatment, the NHS now faces its highest backlog on record. Halfway through last year, more than 300,000 people were estimated to have missed urgent cancer screenings in England alone.

Meanwhile, the full impact of COVID-19 is still unfolding. For example, according to research commissioned by NHS England, COVID-19 could trigger increased demand for mental health services, rising by 40 percent for adults and 60 percent for children and adolescents.

In recognition of the extra challenges caused by COVID-19, the NHS is spending £30 billion across England to clear the backlog of treatment. At the same time, the health service is working on the wider task at hand. This includes addressing systemic challenges and reform. As the NHS Confederation put it:

“The lesson from the 2000s is that only when far-reaching reforms were put in place – alongside the right level of resources – did services improve and waiting times fall.”

Rather than just plugging the gaps, the focus is now very much on improving long-term efficiency and effectiveness. This is exemplified by the goal to deliver 30 percent more elective activity by 2024-25.

There’s clearly a lot of work ahead, for both the NHS and wider social care. So how can ICS leaders, clinicians and provider organisations meet their ambitious targets and improve outcomes across the board. And specifically, how can they consistently level up the communities they serve?

Better data, better outcomes

Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) hold the promise of hyper-integrated health and care services. Underpinning this is partnerships, process innovations and data-driven decision making.

Collaboration is key. At Microsoft, we’re helping ICS organisations transition from the old, fragmented model towards truly joined-up care. By pooling data across health and care providers—and leveraging the power of predictive insights—ICSs can make more informed planning decisions that maximise the impact of their collective resources.

We help ICSs to invest where it matters most: empowering their workforce, improving outcomes and productivity. And all while reducing health and care inequalities.

Integrated data, integrated care

Enhanced data access will transform the roles of health and care professionals over the coming years. Data insights already enable provider organisations to maximise the efficiency of telehealth and digital telecare services. This ensures their services join up and are mutually reinforced. But that’s only the beginning.

Enhanced data access will also enable health and care professionals to shift their focus from reactive care towards pre-emptive and preventative solutions. Microsoft can help you create a 360 degree view of an individual’s care history. This can include key factors such as their housing needs and caring responsibilities. By making use of the latest in analytics and AI, we support ICSs to improve health and care outcomes for their whole population. That means redesigning care pathways to promote wellbeing, prevention and independence. For example, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital is doing some great work in this area.

Unify your data, unify your workforce

Data sharing also fosters a ‘one workforce’ culture of collaboration which extends across the health and care spectrum. 90 percent of ICSs have already adopted a shared care record. They’re using their newfound connectivity to improve how primary, secondary, mental health, and social care work with each other. Additionally, they’re supporting local social and economic development. Rich data and analytics will help the different components of an ICS to work together. They can tackle health inequalities, prioritise at-risk population groups and deliver the best possible care to all.

In this way, data sharing will be a major contributor to creating healthier, happier communities. Microsoft can help ICSs work towards this brighter future while ensuring a ‘privacy-by-design’ approach that ensures the highest levels of data security and role-based access controls.

We’ve only scratched the surface

“The scale of the challenge cannot be underestimated. But neither can the potential rewards,” says Geraint Lewis, Director of Population Health at Microsoft. “Because of their focus on preventive care, and the impact they can have on the wider determinants of health, Integrated Care Systems are ideally poised to help their populations live longer, happier and healthier lives.”

Budgetary pressures will doubtless remain, but technology can help ensure that ICSs use their resources as efficiently and effectively as possible. Data is one of an ICS’s most valuable assets. However, many NHS organisations are only scratching at the surface of its true potential. At Microsoft, we can help your ICS access, connect and translate your population’s data. We’ll help you identify opportunities for improving the quality, equity and efficiency of care. Use this ‘opportunity analysis’ to shape your policies, empower your workforce, and to level up your providers and the communities they serve.

Find out more

Data-led foundation for unrivalled patient care

About the author

Umang is a Chief Clinical Information Officer at Microsoft with a passion for ensuring that technology delivers its full potential and value in healthcare. He is also a practising NHS paediatrician and has a background working across multiple sectors covering both payors and providers. Umang was a foundational member of start-up Babylon Health which had a successful IPO in 2021 on the New York Stock Exchange. With Microsoft, Umang is helping shape the digital transformation in health across the UK which is aiming for better outcomes through seamless integration and innovation. 

The post Part 1: The role of data in helping communities to level up appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to fully grasp an opportunity. Virtual wards were invented in the early 2000’s by Dr Geraint Lewis, now Director of Population Health at Microsoft. Despite that, it’s only in the last few years that they have taken the NHS by storm. Virtual wards help reduce hospital admissions, keep patients safer, and discharge them earlier in collaboration with social care where appropriate.

Watford General Hospital was an early adopter. They use remote monitoring technology to monitor patients’ symptoms and physiological parameters such as heart rate, level of oxygen saturation and temperature. Their app-based model proved overwhelmingly popular with staff and patients alike. In a survey conducted on behalf of the NHSE, 95 percent of patients found the application easy to use and 93 percent were pleased with the remote care service.

See virtual wards in action: NHSE Director of Digital Care Models Tara Donnelly shared a video showing how remote monitoring technologies supported over 78,000 people across England between November 2020 and May 2021.

Widespread remote care is closer than you think

COVID-19 may have been the catalyst, but the long-term potential of harnessing remote technology is clear. By the end of 2021, over 53 virtual wards were providing over 2,500 ‘beds’ nationwide. They support people with a range of conditions. From acute respiratory infections to urinary tract infections and chronic pulmonary disease to more complex presentations, such as people living with frailty.

The NHS is now spending up to £450 million to create at least 25,000 virtual ward beds over the next few years. They help increase capacity, efficiency and safety. Additionally, virtual wards allow health and care providers to: “Fully exploit remote monitoring technology and wider digital platforms to deliver effective and efficient care,” according to the latest operational and planning guidance from the NHS. 

At Microsoft, we’re helping health and care providers harness technology to bring the hospital ward into the home. For example, the staff at Kendal Care Home in Cumbria have been using Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 and Microsoft Teams. This allows GPs to speak to and assess elderly residents in a COVID-safe way—something they’ve celebrated as a “game changer”.

Virtual wards: A hospital in every home?

There’s a reason why hospitals the world over are organised into wards. Now imagine making use of all the systems, staffing and daily routines of a hospital ward—developed and improved over decades—but in the patient’s home. That’s the power of a virtual ward. The point is that remote monitoring and communication technology are essential but not sufficient. To provide safe and effective care, you must apply these technologies within a robust framework. That’s why virtual wards mirror the structures and processes of their real-world counterparts, while replicating several core functions digitally.

Any virtual ward must include:

• Admission process—an easy to follow, step-by-step process to onboard new patients remotely.
• “Call bell” system—patients can call for help via a video conferencing and messaging app. There’s also failsafe backup arrangements in place.
• Regular observations—remote monitoring allows clinicians to keep an eye on each patient’s vital stats. Differing from patient to patient, these may include blood pressure, temperature, pulse, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate etc.
• Tests—patients can conduct blood, urine and other routine tests. These can be uploaded remotely under guidance from clinicians where required.
• Medicines—patients should receive instructions and prompts about which medicines to take, at what time, and can confirm what they’ve taken.
• Ward rounds—video conferencing enables a virtual ward team to review patients face-to-face
• Board rounds—remote whiteboard and productivity tools enable a virtual ward team to quickly review all the patients under their care
• Escalation—a streamlined process moves patients to a real hospital if their condition deteriorates.
• Engaging the support network—extend communication channels to friends and family and formal carers.
• Discharge process—a system for patients to leave their virtual ward and return to the care of their GPs.

Aside from the high level of care coordination, one of the main reasons why virtual wards are so popular with patients is all the above can be done while they sleep in their own beds—and enjoy their own food!

The potential of virtual wards is clear for all to see. At Microsoft, we’re excited to see how remote care evolves. Also, we’re proud to play a key role in supporting the nationwide roll out.

Find out more

Find out more about Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare

About the author

Umang is a Chief Clinical Information Officer at Microsoft with a passion for ensuring that technology delivers its full potential and value in healthcare. He is also a practising NHS paediatrician and has a background working across multiple sectors covering both payors and providers. Umang was a foundational member of start-up Babylon Health which had a successful IPO in 2021 on the New York Stock Exchange. With Microsoft, Umang is helping shape the digital transformation in health across the UK which is aiming for better outcomes through seamless integration and innovation. 

The post Virtual wards, real world benefits appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Power Platform is not a single piece of a software – it’s an entire suite of different tools that help you to build everything from simple to complex solutions. But how do you get your start with something like Power Platform? We spoke to Marc Trotman about his Power Platform journey, and how he’s giving back to a community that supported him along the way.

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Q: Tell us about who you are, and what you’re currently up to!

A: I’m Marc Trotman, and I work for a company called Boss Global Consulting. At the moment I’m actually working with the Centre of Excellence team at HSBC, implementing the CoE toolkit for Power Platform and working on a lot of governance. This has been a big focus of my work in the past year.

We were initially brought in to work on a project, but due to a lack of funding we actually jumped onto their existing dynamic CRM implementation and joined their tech team. I worked on adding functionality for the system that they already had in place, which included writing plugins, custom workflows, JavaScript and configuration of Dynamics. I was even involved in writing an Azure function which would be responsible for the re-certification of users within the bank.

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Q: It’d be great to hear about your career journey. How did you get to where you are now?

A: From my accent, I’m sure you’ve realized that I’m not from England – I’m actually from Barbados, West Indies. I came to the UK in 1994, starting my computing journey with a degree in Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Manchester. I chose computing because, at that point in time, computing was kind of the go-toward. Actually I didn’t even have any kind of experience with computers during my secondary level education, so it was quite an interesting pathway.

Following my graduation in 1998 I went back home to Barbados and started off in web development, working for an offshore company there that was delivering functionality to a company in the US.

After that I worked in Malaysia for five years, and this would be the start of my CRM journey. It was with SalesLogix rather than Microsoft Dynamics, so I was more of a Sage person at that point. I worked for two companies while I was there; NEC Malaysia, and a start-up company called Profitera, where I gained my first introduction to CRM.

When my visa came to an end, I decided I was going back to the UK. On my way back home to Barbados to visit my family, I sent a CV to some recruiters in the UK got an interview while I was in transit! This led to my first job in the UK, working for Panacea on SalesLogix and, later on, Dynamics. A chap called Chris Bridgeman was running the team there, and I’m grateful he was able to take a chance on me. I also met Rhett Clinton, who was a Microsoft MVP, and I learned a lot of my Dynamics knowledge from him.

Following that I joined a company called Outsourcery. At that point in time it was one of the few companies in the UK that actually hosted Dynamics CRM. I worked in a small team of seven people and it was great because it was the first time I worked with more that one colleague with Caribbean or African links – Tricia Sinclair (creator of the Power Platform school), Wayne Alexander and Ona Ojukwu. Until 2016 I mainly did a lot of upgrades from Dynamics 4. I was also creating functionality and solutions for various other industries.

After leaving Outsourcery, I was lucky enough to catch up with Rhett Clinton who was working at Metro Bank. At that point in time they were the poster child for the Power Platform – one of the first banks to really go all-in on cloud. I was really attracted to working there because I’d be able to work with MVPs, as well as with Power Platform. I joined in a senior developer role, adding functionality to their existing system and on Unified Service Desk. I was also involved in creating a Canvas app, developed with help from Microsoft, that let customers see how long they would have to wait to see someone when entering the bank.

Eventually I was promoted into a more senior team manager role where I had the opportunity to mentor junior developers. I created a training program for them to learn Power Platform, and I would have one-on-one sessions with them and create exercises around certain Power Platform topics. This helped upskill people from Junior Developer up to a CRM Developer.

This leads me to my current role at Boss Global Consulting. We’re a small company of technical, highly-skilled people. The past year has seen more of a focus on governance, though I still get opportunities to get hands-on in terms of extending the functionality around the toolkit and even writing PowerShell scripts to pull in information from the tenant around Power BI.

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Q: We’ve seen you speak about Power Platform at events like Dynamics Saturday and Scottish Summit. What is it that makes you so passionate about Power Platform?

A: My interest in it is around the no code, low code ethos and making these types of tools available not only for power developers, but also citizen developers.

I also write a blog – not as often as I should – where I try to put across my knowledge on Power Platform, as well as a Twitter account. There’s a great community out there that I pick up a lot of information from, and it’s great that we get to share knowledge.

But mostly, for me, it’s all about what these tools can do. I did a presentation in 2020 around how the Power Platform could be used in small island states like Barbados, because obviously when the pandemic hit, it was not easy for people to go out and shop, schools weren’t in person and had to go online, etc. Barbados and a number of Caribbean Islands are just not as digital focused, and this could become a turning point.

There are obviously the use cases where people could be ordering groceries online, but there are also things like tracking who leaves and enters the country, and the different licenses people need to apply for. All of these things are done manually using paper forms, and what I presented showed how Power Platform could be used to do it more efficiently.

A model-driven app could be used to track arrivals and departures. For example, if someone entered the country and they were born in Barbados, it would create a contact record to say OK, that’s a citizen. If not, it would create a record showing that they were a visitor, and you’d have a central repository that government organisations could hook into to access personal information about visitors. You could then visualise important Covid-related information and add virtual agents to help answer questions people might have, all through Power Platform.

There was an introduction to Power Platform given at the University of the West Indies in Barbados last year by Dona Sarkar, who spent three months living and working in the country. She also worked with the university to create an introduction to Power Platform for their students. I joined a hackathon they held in a technical advisor position to help students in building solutions.

So yes, I do it for my day job, but I’m also always thinking about how I could actually transfer some of this knowledge and technology back into the Caribbean because we have a quite a skilled working force. Most people are educated up to university level and the opportunities that Power Platform could offer are huge.

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Q: Did you have any role models during your journey? If so, who were they?

A: When I first came to the UK and started at Panacea, I was green. I hadn’t worked in that type of environment before. There I met Martin Draper and Steven Robertson who gave me a lot of information around my role and helped me to develop my skills.

I don’t have role models that made me follow a particular path per se, but the people I’ve met and worked with on my journey have all contributed to where I am at this point in time.

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Q: What are your thoughts on the current level of diversity within the tech industry, and do you think it’s improving with time?

A: Outsourcery was the first company that I worked with where there was more than one person with a black background in my team, but it’s been getting better. Plus in teams like at Metro, they were more diversified because they have a team made up of people from all over the world.

As a black person in technology, I’ve enjoyed working in my other teams. I’ve never felt prejudice against me and everyone I’ve worked with has been supportive and very helpful. I’ve been very lucky.

The lack of black developers has been evident, though. Hopefully with initiatives like the Power Platform school this will start to change, and I’ll be using my own experiences as a mentor to help other people navigate the waters around CRM-related careers.

I met David Fowler, a Partner Software Architect at Microsoft, virtually during the Power Platform hack in Barbados. It turned out he’s also from Barbados, and he’s involved in developing a lot of new .NET technologies. There’s not a lot of visibility of black professionals in these positions, and it’d be great for people starting their CRM journeys to hear more of this type of story. I think it would help to attract people into the industry and into these tech jobs.

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Q: What advice would you give to other people who are looking to get into a role similar to yours?

A: Everyone coming into tech now has access to so many resources that I think it’s really about what you want to specialise in. Whether it’s game development, web development or the Power Platform route, the resources are out there – Microsoft Learn, community groups and YouTube videos are a great place to start.

That said, I think being able to get exposure to different technologies and different industries is very important. It’ll give you direction on areas you want to focus on going forward, as well as give you an appreciation for the bigger picture.

If you’re aiming for a Power Platform role specifically, you’ll definitely want to get yourself involved in the community. It’s very welcoming, and there are many people who will be willing to help and even mentor you. Groups like Power Addicts and The Power Platform School are great places to start.

I think that’s it. Find a good mentor, join a very welcoming community and give back where you can.

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Marc Trotman is an experienced Power Platform Solution Architect who has worked in a number of sectors such as banking, education and non-profit.

He loves introducing organisations and individuals to the potential of the Power Platform, to transform their businesses using best practices and effective governance principles.

Marc lives in Nottingham but was born and raised in Barbados. He loves keeping fit, travelling and is working hard to improve his guitar playing.

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Further reading

• Getting started with Power Apps
• Getting started with the AI Builder in Power Platform
• Using Power BI and Logic Apps​ to analyse social media streams

The post Passionate about Power Platform – A chat with Marc Trotman appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

When .NET arrived, I was working on Classic ASP and PHP websites and Visual Basic desktop applications. C# was a brand new language, but I was surrounded by developers with great experience who were all clear that they were moving to C# and .NET.

I have early memories of getting to grips with data design surfaces, grid views, and my first proper attempts at object-oriented programming in Visual Studio. In 2006, there was a big leap forward with Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0. The topic of conversation for several months was generics, though there were some other great features like partial classes and iterators that also arrived at the same time.

Each version of .NET and Visual Studio became an event in the calendar, unlike the experience of previous languages and tools. It was immediately obvious how we could put each new feature to use in the real world in exciting and innovative ways.

Then something amazing happened. ASP.NET MVC arrived, and Microsoft made the code available on Codeplex with a public license. This meant we could look through the code to get ideas, or to better understand how MVC worked under the hood. For those of us who had worked with raw HTML and CSS, MVC was like a homecoming event. We had full control over all the HTML generated and a great pattern for organising the code.

Within five years, the MVC web stack was fully open source, with an Apache 2.0 license; a pattern that soon became normal with Microsoft now making thousands of repositories open sourced on GitHub. For a few people, this means they can directly contribute to these projects, but for many others it provides an amazing resource for finding out how certain problems have been solved. It is not surprising that people refer to this open source pivot as being a new era for Microsoft developers.

Visual Studio, .NET, and C# have remained at the top of my favourites list for 20 years because they keep getting practical and useful innovations. The release notes are filled with features that are immediately useful, just like that .NET 2 release all those years ago. The .NET 6 release was just as exciting as the .NET 2 release and we still have excited conversations in the development community like we had about generics.

When I have an idea for a project, .NET is still my first choice. It is a start-fast and stay-fast ecosystem where getting an idea down quickly doesn’t crush productivity down the line. In 2022 I can get started with fewer lines of code and with amazing code completion that has a deep understanding of the patterns being written. I can easily run my code anywhere. With .NET I don’t have to trade off longevity and innovation; I can have both.

It is amazing that .NET has thrived for 20 years. It has been the most amazing journey for me, but I know there is more to come!

-=-

Steve Fenton is a Microsoft MVP for Developer Technologies. He has been sharing his passion for TypeScript since October 2012, presenting at developer meet-ups, running training sessions, and answering questions on Stack Overflow. He has worked on large-scale JavaScript applications for over 14 years, and with TypeScript for over five years. You can read more of his work on his personal blog, or chat with him over on Twitter.

Learn more

• Watch the .NET 20th Anniversary stream on YouTube
• Build .NET applications with C#

The post Happy 20th Birthday, .NET! appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We’re now arriving at the end of 2021, so as is tradition we’re taking a look back at the Top 10 articles that were most popular by you, the TechNet UK audience! It’s great to see a mix of names amongst the authors, complimenting a wide variety of different topics.

A massive thank you to our guest writers and contributors for providing these articles, and we hope to work with writers new and old in 2022 to create even more great content for everyone at TechNet UK.

If you’re interested in writing for TechNet UK, drop us an email at UKTechStories@microsoft.com with a rough idea about what topic you’d like to cover and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Without further ado, here’s the top ten!

10. Azure AppDev Trends in 2021

by Mark Harrison

Mark Harrison takes a look at the AppDev trends he’s been seeing so far this year, as well as touching on the themes he’s frequently asked to cover as an Azure AppDev Specialist.

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9. Backup your data lake using Azure Data Factory – Metadata Copy activity

by Issagha Ba, Athulya Ramamoorthy, Volkan Civelek and Abiodun Olatunji

In this blog post, the Microsoft Customer Success Unit will walk you through how to leverage ADF pipelines for full and incremental backups of your data lake on Azure.

Read the article

8. Building Scalable Data Science Applications using Containers – Part 5

by Jon Machtynger

In this first of two blogs, Jon Machtynger takes a look at building an environment locally using docker-compose, while making some observations about limitations.

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7. How to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of your application

by Assim Hussain

The first principle of green software engineering is to build applications that are carbon efficient. That means for each gram of carbon our application is responsible for emitting into the environment, we try to extract the most value from that gram as possible.

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6. Sustainability and Green Software Engineering

by Mark Harrison

Mark Harrison takes a look at what Sustainability and Green Software Engineering means for Software Engineers and Application Developers.

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5. A look at the Azure announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2021

by Chris Walden

This year’s Microsoft Ignite is now over. Let’s take a look at some of the announcements, and how you can catch up on sessions if you’ve missed them.

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4. Creating a Metadata-Driven Processing Framework For Azure Data Factory

by Paul Andrew

This open source code project delivers a simple metadata driven processing framework for Azure Data Factory and/or Azure Synapse Analytics (Intergate Pipelines).

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3. The ultimate guide to attending technical events remotely in the UK

by Sara Allison

There are hundreds of amazing Microsoft-focused technical communities you can get involved in (yes, even during a pandemic!), with focus areas from .NET to data science and SQL and everything in between.

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2. Using open source software to connect charities with people in need of social housing

by Chris Sainty

We speak to Chris Sainty, who proved anything is possible in OS by using it to develop the Blazor app that connects charities to people in need of social housing.

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1. Powering 3 million requests an hour with open source software

by Tony Gorman

We spoke to Tony Gorman from ASOS to learn how open source software is being used to power services that handle upwards of 3 million customer requests an hour.

Read the article

The post The Top 10 TechNet UK Articles of 2021! appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.